


Love is For Children

by damedeleslac



Series: We're all a little bit crazy - verse [4]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Children, Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Abuse, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damedeleslac/pseuds/damedeleslac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is For Children, and Natasha hasn't been a child for a very long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is For Children

 

  
~~~~  
~~~~  
Love is For Children. ~~~~  
 ~~~~

* * *

  
~~~~  
~~~~  
^^^  
 ~~~~  
 ~~~~  
She’s 8 the last time she sees her parents – she’ll miss her mother, but not her father.

  
She wants to be a ballerina and shows some talent for it and since her father has already decided that the man from the government can take her, her mother can’t really say no.

  
The last thing she remembers about her mother, are the tears running down her cheeks, as the car – a real car, not the clunky, half broken down truck her family shares with three others – drives away.

  
It was spring; the landscape divided into blue sky above, green grass below and the white blossoms of the trees in the orchard between, and her mother had cried for her.

  
The man from the government takes her to a big house behind a bigger wall, where there are lots of girls wanting to be ballerinas.  
The women at the house give the girls new names; Katrina, Nastasia, Illena, proper ballerina names they tell the girls.

They call her Natalia, Natalia the Prima Ballerina.  
It sounds right, but _Natalia_ still likes her old name better. ~~~~

^^^ ~~~~

  
Natalia is 10 when Irena is sent home.

  
Natalia’s the best in the ballet classes, third in mathematics, second in French and fifth in English. She’s learning gymnastics, diving and how to ride a horse.

She’d liked Irena and is sad that her friend is gone, angry that she left without saying goodbye, and jealous that Irena gets to see her mother again. ~~~~

^^^ ~~~~

  
She’s 13 when she learns what _going home_ really means.

  
After Irena, Svetlana, Yvette and Katiya have all gone home. ~~~~

  
Natalia; no lower than third in all her classes, is awake when Madame Volokova collects Lidiya from her bed. She follows then out to the back wall and has to shove a hand in her mouth when the ballet mistress shoots Lidiya between the eyes. ~~~~

^^^ ~~~~

  
Natalia is 16 when the soldiers come to help with their training.

There had been 35 girls when she’d arrived at the house and she’s watched seven being taken out to the back wall, shot between the eyes and buried in the forest behind the house.

The soldiers teach them how to fight and how to shoot. Natalia learns Mandarin and Korean, how to drive a car and how to make bombs.

One of the soldier’s mothers had been an acrobat in the circus and he’d shown them how to walk the tightrope.

Natalia strolls across it like it’s the garden path, and is watching with the others when Mariya slips and falls and breaks her neck. ~~~~

  
^^^ ~~~~

  
She’s 20 when the spies replace the soldiers.

  
There are only fifteen girls left at the house.  
Vasilisa had been the last to _go home_. She’d fallen in love.

  
And they’d killed the soldier, taken her baby away and she’d hung herself from the dining room rafters. ~~~~

  
The spies teach them how to pick locks and open safes and how to flatter man and women alike. Natalia learns about poisons and the right place to hide a gun so it will never be found and how to kill someone without anyone knowing she’d done it.

They learn how to type and answer phones, how to cook and clean and how to speak English with an American accent.  
They garrotte Morena for failings that lesson.  
 ~~~~  
^^^ ~~~~

  
Natalia is 23 when the scientists appear at the doors.

  
She’s killed 3 people, danced the part of _Odette_ for Stalin and nearly been arrested for public indecency, seducing a possible informant under the Eifel Tower.

The scientists take blood and prod and poke at her. They ask the same questions again and again until she starts writing her answers upside down and back to front, in Greek.

  
They take Natalia and four others away and inject then with things that make them shiver and shake and whimper and freeze and burn all at once.

  
When it stops, Natalia is the only one left, and they hand her back to the spies.  
 ~~~~  
^^^ ~~~~

  
Natalia is forty when she really notices that she hasn’t been aging.

  
Anya is in a British prison, Pelageya defected to Canada, Milena is married with a family in Montana, Violetta teaches French at another big house and Alisa is the mistress of an American general stationed in Germany.

The house is empty except for Natalia and her handlers.  
 ~~~~  
^^^ ~~~~

  
She’d fifty when someone describes her as a spider.

  
The Black Widow; a natural killer.

  
It’s the first time she thinks about defecting.  
 ~~~~  
^^^ ~~~~

  
Natalia’s sixty three when she slips her handlers to go home.

  
She’d bought the farm years ago, using a name; her real name, confident that there was nobody left who remembered it, to do it.  
It’s spring.

  
The grass is green, the sky is blue and the trees in the orchard are white with blossoms.

And there are bullets in the floor boards of the room where her sisters used to sleep.  
 ~~~~  
^^^ ~~~~

  
Clint Baron is thirty one when he makes a choice.

  
Natalia is seventy five when she becomes Natasha. ~~~~

  
~~~~

* * *

  
~~~~  
~~~~  
~~~~


End file.
